Change is good because it adds dimension to life. Even now, working with a non-profit for poverty, I read articles with a different lens. Travel or meeting people gives me a kaleidoscope view of the world. Going outside my viewpoint of my daled amos (four cubits) gave me a new perspective on the town where I grew up.

To call the neighborhood I grew up in a town would be a fallacy. Towns to me elicit white picket fences and grass. Not so in my section of Brooklyn.

There are demographics and then there is the insular community where I was cocooned. This area was, when I was growing up, either Jewish or Caribbean. Today's topic is the insular community I grew up in within this neighborhood of diversity. My synagogue, my school, the shopping street.

I know that I have been called out for not being tznuis but I don't remember the particular incident. I remember the frustration of the possibility of such an occurrence. The itch I would feel at the rules of the school and the community. The fact that my older sister once got fined $2 for being spotted in bobby socks on the main street. The feeling of not being able to break out.

I was blessed to live on the outskirts of the Jewish community area. A lovely block. Situated near a park, a synagogue, a library and, most importantly, the train which enabled me to skulk out of the area out of view of imaginary prying eyes. My own little world where no one with a prominent, traditional, stuffy community position lived. Where we were all quirky and totally judged each others' oddities but accepted them. Where I could lean outside in my pajamas to test the day's weather or look like an absolute slob while running around the park without the awkwardness of running into a teacher (though yes, I realize that nobody actually cares but I think I'll think people care until I'm seventy. Then I shall stop).

It was an oasis. I never felt quite at equilibrium with my community. Admittedly, some insecurity there of not being of the socioeconomic status of some of my peers or not possessing the frum-chassidish-ch graces some of them possessed.

It was a place I loved to hate and hated to love. Hated it for I felt at odds with it. Loved it for the fun my friends and I had there. The hyped of excitement and energy in the air. The small town claustrophobia that sometimes permeated city living.

You know that question people ask twins? What's it like to be a twin? And the twins are like, "well, what's it like to be a singleton?" Like, seriously. This is the life we know. We don't know how it's like not to be twins. It just is. Growing up in this town was like that. The norm.

At several points of the year, people from around the world would camp out on the floor of our schools. Normal. It was a welcome reprieve, and fairly common occurrence, when a teacher would stop class after hearing about a student's sibling's engagement and play a round of Jewish geography.  It was normal to have farbrengans hosted in classmate's homes. High school was full of camp spirit.

I wasn't part of it though. I knew all the auspicious dates on the Chassidic calendar because those were the days classes would be cancelled for special programs. Meaning that if I stayed in school until one, chatted up to several afternoon teachers, I could ditch and one of those teachers would remember speaking to me and mark me for attendance as there was no formal roll call on those days. I had my own form of liberation on the 19th of Kislev.

I was giving a friend a tour of the area who had always been curious about her Jewish neighbors (she is part of the gentrification of the time). We passed by an artist gallery but it was closed. I had really wanted to show her his work as he is featured worldwide. So we went to the museum and I asked the security guard if we could nip upstairs to the second floor for a quick look at the artist's mural. He acquiesced and my friend expressed surprise at the ease of entering a museum so casually. She herself works at a museum. Though, ease of entry doesn't always happen it makes sense for my community to be understanding and...brotherly. I was wearing a skirt. I seem hemiashe. The gentile security guard knows the look.

For most of America, schools do not include wedding halls. Communal social services are not all supported by the high school girls. Public schools don't offer their classrooms as a place to sleep except in dire emergency. Most grocery stores don't have credit for families. Museums don't have swarms of teenage tour guides.

My town is cutesy and adorable and very imperfect. It is an iconic space  in the chronicles of Jewish history. This town has a powerful impact on the world.

I could appreciate it now for its quirks. Maybe because I'm not in the educational system. The faults are still there. The lack of the community service for the little guy. The ill treatment of those without social status. The nepotism of the school and communal leaders.

Leaving helped me come back. I no longer feel that the school I studied in or the people here are the dictators of a chassidic lifestyle. I have the right and ability to study a Chassidic text off the shelf and own my chassidus. It took me being away from this place, but not from the Chassidic lifestyle, to unearth my own agency in my relationship with G-d.

Israel, My Conflated Heart

I was at an iconic (favorite word alert) Brooklyn pizza shop with a friend. A woman who I had last met at the Tisha B'av break-the-fast at the kotel walked in. I flagged her down to say how do you do but really to inquire if she had made any headway on her Aliyah dreams.

"Are you going?"

"I need to sort out a job and a place to live. Honestly, I don't want to go right now though I know I should go now to feel solidarity."

I was astonished.

In my delusional mind Israel is the safest place on earth. It is home.
Maybe not my current home. But a home like the parents' or grandparents' home where you are enveloped by coziness and warmth.
Homes are havens. The place where we can be ourselves.
I never realized terror could destroy the ambience of our dwelling to this extent.
Never before, not even during the intifada and the bus bombings, were the streets this emptied.
It is horrific. My heart breaks. Dear G-d, what is going on?

This is an ode to a land that enlivens me. To support Israel, I can attempt to express my esoteric love for the place, that may only be understood by those who have also meandered the land and drank from its spirit.

I had a golden summer. I traveled in Europe for three weeks and then lived in Israel for five glorious weeks. For the first time, I was in Israel to meander the land and not an a whirlwind tour. All travel enlightens you. Opens your minds to different ideas about living. Israel, due to its Jewish diversity allows people to explore the many paths to one of the most vital relationships you'll ever have: your relationship with G-d and thereby uncover yourself themselves. This makes Israel different than any other place. You can discover in Israel what no other country has to offer.

You go to Europe to find yourself. You go to Israel to finesse your relationship with G-d. In Israel, you search for a conduit for your life source. One has to tread these waters carefully.

I met my Birthright guide and her fiancé for dinner one day. I inquired about the Jewish demographic of the area and discovered the various stratas of reform or conservative don't exist in Israel.  Someone is either Dati, keeps halacha, or not.  Which rabbi or halachic standard they follow differs but all our Jewish.

On a bus, I emailed my mom:

"I just left the tomb of Rochel, our mother.  There were women with turbans, others with outfits that almost made them look too covered,  Williamsburg style and more.  But we are all Jewish.  Everyone sitting on this bus. Common ancestry,  common Torah, common beliefs.

I adore this land where I can say Shabbat shalom to the bus driver,  play Jewish geography with nearly anyone and eat at a diner at the central bus station.  I cannot do this with such ease anywhere else in the world."

My mom responded:

"You can see how after spending two years in seminary, right afterwards, I really wanted to live there."

However, it is not all starbursts and marble halls. I met a man who had moved to Israel from Chicago, where, though he was not religious, he would attend the modern orthodox synagogue to see friends and to be involved in Jewish life. Since making Aliyah, he does need to make an effort to feel Jewish as just living in the Holy Land and seeing people dressed up in costume on Purim does that for him. I asked him where G-d was in what he described.  He said I touched upon a discerning point. He has not yet found his pathway to consciously connect to G-d though he moved to the Holy Land and had previously attended an American shul.

This scenario plays out on so many levels in Israel. Everything goes. We are all Jewish. And it's beautiful and uplifting and psychedelic but it is also abstract. I can feel Jewish, spiritual, connections. I got caught up in the rush of Judaism without checking in with G-d. My (halachic) boundaries that construct my relationship with G-d in a way of active awareness. That it is not just about the enchantment of our majestic lifestyle but more than that. (Disclaimer: this is about me finding my path which is not to say other paths aren't valid).

Being in Israel, I had to remind myself that I believe in halacha because it can be easy not to on Ben Yehuda. I believe there is a place where one's intrinsic person must be refined within the glow with Hashem's desires and will.  This is not via conforming on matters that are not halacha but living within the palace of Jewish law and using it to decorate your life.

Thus is the uniqueness of Israel, defining the grey areas for you. All paths of serving G-d are valid. However, for me, keeping that extra standard is what makes a chossid (pious person) as defined in the Path of Our Fathers. Not just doing whatever was floating everyone else's boat but holding steadfast and reaffirming or discovering what my mojo is without losing sight of who I am or the best person me I could be. Actually keeping halacha though it is easy to feel kosher without law and order.
 
It was Israel's gift to me that I got to hash this out over the summer and have clarity over the life I want to live. It can be Israel's gift to you too.